Supporting Beck is Lips’ service

Spencer Patterson

Friday, Nov. 22, 2002 | 9:39 a.m.

When Beck called the Flaming Lips with a unique offer over the summer, the veteran alternative rock trio saw no need to hesitate before accepting.

It's not every day Beck Hansen calls a band with an invitation to tour with him.

"He called out of the blue and was like, 'Hey, I love your new record. I've got a record coming out too, and I'm looking for a band to take on tour,'" Flaming Lips multi-instrumentalist Steven Drozd said in a recent phone interview from the Beck tour bus en route to Houston.

"And without thinking we said, 'Yeah, it sounds like a great idea.'"

It did not take long, however, for the Lips to fully grasp what they had just agreed to undertake. Not only would they open Beck's shows with their own set, but they would also serve as his backing musicians.

And that meant Flaming Lips vocalist/guitarist Wayne Coyne, bassist Michael Ivins and Drozd suddenly had a stack of work at their feet.

"We agreed before we actually thought it through and realized we'd have to play our show and then play his show with him," Drozd said. "We had to learn, like, 25 songs in a couple of weeks. I knew some of his stuff, but not all of it. So it's been a lot of work."

That work appears to have paid off for the Flaming Lips. The collaboration began with a set of October dates and picked up again on Nov. 12 in Austin, Texas. The band has received mostly favorable reviews, and the tour has translated into greater exposure for the band's latest album, "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots."

"I think it's been worth it overall,' said Drozd, who alternates between guitar, keyboard, drums and backing vocals onstage. "I think the crowds end up really getting a good show, and our record is selling really well."

The Flaming Lips and Beck will play to a sold-out crowd tonight at 8 at The Joint at the Hard Rock Hotel.

Backing a colorful personality such as Beck may sound like an unusual move for an established act like the Flaming Lips. But over the course of its 19-year career, the experimental outfit has made its name by taking chances and bucking trends.

Formed in Oklahoma City in 1983, the Lips quickly earned a reputation for mixing musical styles and sounds, releasing a string of varied records on several labels during the '80s.

In 1991 the band's current lineup solidified when Drozd joined founding members Coyne and Ivins. Unexpectedly, the trio signed to major label Warner Bros. Records and soon penned their only Top-40 hit to date: 1993's "She's Don't Use Jelly."

That led to one of the group's strangest moments, a March 1995 appearance on popular "Beverly Hills, 90210." Performing in the series' Peach Pit venue, the Lips lip-synced to "She Don't Use Jelly" as character Steve Sanders (played by Ian Ziering) proclaimed, "You know, I've never been a big fan of alternative music, but these guys rocked the house."

Despite the ribbing he's taken for that stunt over the years, Drozd remembers it fondly.

"They were probably looking for Smashing Pumpkins or somebody like that and they said no. They probably went down a list of like 20 bands and we were No. 20, and we said, 'Yeah, of course we'll do that,' " Drozd said. "And I'm really glad we did it.

"I ended up getting into the show after we did it, and every once in a while I'll watch a rerun and that will come up and it always really freaks me out."

After that brief flirtation with fame, the Flaming Lips returned to their semi-underground status, retaining a cultlike following of devoted fans behind a steady stream of diverse efforts.

The strangest of those recordings arrived in 1997 in the form of "Zaireeka," a four-disc set intended to be played simultaneously on four separate CD players which, admittedly, is not easy for a casual music listener.

The Lips followed that up with a series of "boombox" performances, in which crowd members were invited onstage to participate with the band.

"We'd get like 40 volunteers out of the audience -- 20 people on my side and 20 on Wayne's side -- and we'd give every person a boombox and a tape," Drozd said. "Then we'd instruct them to hit play all at the same time, and we would actually conduct them turning up and down their volume. Michael was in the middle running all the tape loops. Some of it was really amazing."

In 1999 the Lips returned to slightly more familiar territory, with the single-disc "The Soft Bulletin," the band's most critically acclaimed album. In July, the trio followed it up with "Yoshimi," a CD featuring elements of techno and electronica, as well as traditional pop and rock sounds.

As the cover shot -- a woman preparing to wage war with a giant, pink robot -- as well as song titles like "In the Morning of the Magicians," "Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell" and "Approaching Pavonis Mons by Balloon (Utopia Planitia)" suggest, a loose science-fiction theme runs through much of the new album.

But that's nothing compared to the Flaming Lips' next major project, a sci-fi movie slated for a late 2003 release tentatively titled "Christmas on Mars."

Drozd's brief plot summary:

"There's a bunch of us cosmonauts, and we finally colonize Mars. We've converted the spacecraft into living quarters, and people are getting depressed and suicidal. We're out in space and there are all these technical failures -- like our oxyen generator breaks down -- and we might die. But we decide we want to have this pageant to celebrate Christmas on Mars. And Wayne plays this Martian that transforms himself into Santa Claus and saves the day. That's the really, really short version of it."

Drozd plays the lead role, with about one-third of the film already completely shot and edited.

"Wayne and I were talking about this movie and he asked, 'You ever done any acting?' and I said, 'Well, as a matter of fact in the seventh and eighth grade I won a lot of awards in drama class.' " Drozd said laughing. "And he took that like, 'Well, maybe Steven could be the actor.' "

Drozd's foray into acting hardly seemed likely in 1996, when his musical career -- and even his life -- were threatened by a bite on his hand from one of the world's most poisonous spiders, a brown recluse.

"It was pretty scary, really," he said. "It got really infected and abscessed; I had a red streak going down my vein towards my heart and my hand was the size of a basketball. They had to do major surgery on my hand, but my thumb and all my fingers work fine now. But it was nuts. I was so freaked out that as soon as I got my hand out of the cast I sat down at the keyboard to make sure I could still play."

Back with a renewed sense of purpose, Drozd said he sees the Flaming Lips' career continuing far beyond its 20-year anniversary in 2003.

"It sounds hokey, but we just love making music together," Drozd said. "I knew when I joined the band that these were the people I wanted to play with for a long time. And here we are 11 years later, and we still actually get along well."